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Transforming the workforce and enhancing multi-disciplinary team working

HEIW continues to implement a continuing improvement programme for practice-based education and training environments. Increased commissioning numbers across all healthcare programmes place a significant premium on placement capacity and there is a pressing need to ensure students have high-quality, interprofessional practice learning opportunities across all health and care sectors, and critically, within mental health services. Increased practice learning experiences across a range of sectors is essential both for students’ understanding of contemporary models of service delivery and for a continuing and sustainable health and care workforce in Wales.
 

Lived Experience and Recovery College

Through the workforce plan we are committed to raising the profile of Lived Experience within our workforce. Our ambition in HEIW is to empower all regions to implement Lived Experience Workforce (Peer Support Workers, Peer Trainers, Peer Leads, and Co-Production roles) and to spread and scale Peer Led and Co-Produced Recovery College provision to support the wellbeing and mental health of Wales.

We have developed a Lived Experience area on our Y Ty Dysgu website for our various resources, which include:

  • Guidance for national recovery colleges
  • Frameworks for the peer support workforce
  • Reports and evaluations of various projects and initiatives
  • Information about events and meetings
  • Videos from the work that has been going on through our national team
 
Scoping mental health placements within the Allied Health Professions

Our Practice Education Facilitators began work this year and have started engaging with key allied health professional leads in the health boards, higher education institutions, and the voluntary sector. Several key themes are emerging from this early engagement: Obtaining practice education experiences in mental health appears to be gaining interest, with more AHP students asking for a mental health placement. For some professions, there is recognised value in incorporating more curricula teaching of mental health within pre-registration programmes. Across all stakeholders there has been a positive engagement in discussions about practice education for the AHPs in mental health. Our South-West regional Practice Education Facilitator is due to commence in post in August 2024, and we hope to recruit into our North Wales regional post soon. Together, the three regional PEFs will be exploring innovative ways of building placement capacity in mental health for AHP students, to ensure that they obtain the safe, quality learning experiences they need to be able to join the mental health workforce in the future. (link to PEF section of main website and report here)

We have supported 13 Allied Health Professional Pathfinder projects that have increased access to specialised support in a variety of settings, explored new service models and delivered significant positive outcomes in their regions. We are now evaluating these projects, sharing good practice and looking at how to spread and scale this work into the future. The results of this work will be published over the course of 2025.

 

To find out more please contact the mental health programme team